Raving Dave

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Friday, May 29, 2015

Like
all first impressions, when you introduce an important character for the first
time in a screenplay, what they say and do immediately sets up expectations about
who they are and what’s troubling them. Which is why it's so important to be specific.

Lana later said:"The fact that she smokedimmediately told me she was a strange one."

I’m currently working on a rewrite and part of the rewrite process involves writing a new synopsis. This forces me
to check whether the way I present characters in the synopsis
is actually how they appear on the page in the screenplay. Which is a humbling exercise, to say
the least. One of the key ways to establish a character as quickly as possible
in the mind of the reader, is to make sure that whatever the character does and
says when they first appear, illustrates what makes them specific or intriguing
and what might be troubling them. This first
impression sets up expectations in the reader’s mind, and
raises questions about how the story is going to proceed. It evokes curiosity.
Put differently: If the introduction of a character doesn’t raise any questions
or suggest any kind of drama, there might be
something missing.

Unexceptional
Action: The specific behaviour is descriptive

The action itself might be a generic
action, such as putting on a shoe or sending an email, in which case the specific
way the character performs the action is what illustrates who they are. Take
for example the opening of Philomena (screenplay by Steve Coogan and Jeff
Pope), where Philomena (played by Judi Dench) sits in an almost empty church looking
at the Madonna and Child. Not particularly exceptional or telling as an action,
although the image is a symbolic foreshadowing of the story of Philomena the
mother, and her lost child. However, when the priest approaches and addresses Philomena,
we instantly know from his words that they know each other and that the priest
is concerned about her. We also learn from her evasive answers to his questions
that she has a secret. Now the moment has become specific to her. We intuit
that this is going to be a story about Philomena’s secret, and it clearly has
some connection to the Catholic church.

Exceptional
Action: The activity itself is descriptive

Alternatively, the action might be
something extraordinary, such as someone catching a fish with their feet or
stitching up a gaping wound on an injured lioness. In that case, the action itself
tells us something about the character. An example of this might be the
character of Eric Lomax (played by Colin Firth) in The Railway Man (screenplay
by Frank Cottrell Boyce and Andy Paterson), who is introduced during the
opening credits as very ordinary looking man lying on his back on the floor of a study
reciting a children’s rhyme to himself as a kind of mantra. Not something we
all do every day, and suggesting that this ordinary man has something very
extraordinary on his mind. When we next meet him he is hurriedly changing
trains and telling us in a voice-over about minute details of a railway
timetable. Another clue that we are about to embark on a journey with a man
with a strange obsession.

Generic
vs specific in the rewrite

...and then I realised 'holding a roller skate'didn't describe what was troubling her.

I used to try as hard as
possible to avoid rewriting. I just liked the feeling of finishing a first
draft and then starting on my next masterpiece. Big mistake. In fact I’ve come
to enjoy rewriting just as much as writing the first draft, because it’s in the
rewrite that I really get to know the characters properly. The rewrite feels a
lot more like craft, which I guess is an acquired taste (at least it was for
me). In the rewrite I have more room to analyse and approach details from a
more rational point of view. Whereas an initial draft is more of an intuitive
attempt to express the general shape of a story. Once it’s out there on the
page, though, I can begin to hone it.

Going back to page one and looking—with
the benefit of hindsight—at how I initially introduced my characters might reveal
that I’ve gotten to know a character better during the course of writing the screenplay,
or that I got them right the first time round. Or that I actually still don’t
know the character well enough. Maybe I thought I knew what the main dramatic
conflict was for a particular character, but it turns out I need to articulate it more
precisely.

So, simply asking myself whether I’ve opened with enough specific
‘character moments’ for a reader to get an adequate first impression of the character, reveals whether I know the character well enough myself.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

As
a screenwriter, knowing how to allow yourself to be genuinely spontaneous in
your writing is an important skill, but it’s easier said than done in a culture
that glorifies deadlines and a 24-7 work ethic.

As Edward Slingerland writes in his intriguing
tome Trying Not To Try, the Chinese have been wrestling for thousands of
years with concept of spontaneity. Moral behaviour has to be spontaneous to be
genuine and authentic, and yet you have to learn good manners. As Slingerland
explains, Chinese schools of thought varied from the Confucian ideal of
training yourself endlessly in etiquette and virtuous behaviour until these
become second nature, to the Daoist ideal of not trying at all to master
anything and living entirely spontaneously.

The jury is still out on which approach is
most desirable, but the question still remains: Why is increased mental effort not a guarantee for
better results? Indeed, why is the opposite often true: great athletes and
performers are famous for ‘choking’ and being unable to perform at crucial
moments because they are thinking too consciously about what they are doing. And
trying too hard to impress a potential date just makes you seem desperate. On
the other hand, making no effort at all is not particularly productive either.
Why do people get in their own way so much?

Is
Your Nose Ironic?

Psychologist Daniel Wegner has done some fascinating
research about what is known as Ironic Process Theory.
This basically refers to the paradoxical effect of trying to control your own
thoughts. If you try not to think of a purple car, that’s what you will think
of, and if you to try to focus solely on a purple car, that will be the only
thing you can’t think of. Here’s an example from my own personal experience: I
have a large nose. I love my nose, but I live in a country (the Netherlands)
where most people don’t have large noses, and I regularly encounter people who
struggle unsuccessfully not to glance at my nose, and whose efforts to avoid
any olfactory references in their speech lead to precisely the opposite effect.
They use phrases that contain nasal metaphors and then squirm in embarrassment
as they hear themselves saying what they had resolved not to. I’m sure you have
your own examples of unsuccessful thought repression.

Look at my nose,my nose is amazing...

The point of mentioning this is: Making an
effort to be spontaneous is a self-defeating paradox. However, creating
circumstances in which you are most likely to be spontaneous is an achievable,
practical task. It requires you to become aware of what type of circumstances
or tasks trigger your own spontaneity. What type of writing (outlining, writing
dialogue, writing prose, longhand, etc.), at what time of the day, in which
locations, with or without music, standing on your head, and so on. It also requires
you to acknowledge that this is not a set of ‘rules’ you need to make, but
rather an ongoing awareness of how you function. Armed with this knowledge you
can adjust your writing process to minimize situations in which you have to
make that (counterproductive) effort to be spontaneous.

Of course, not all stages of the writing
process require the same degree of spontaneity. For example, when you’re
editing or rewriting your own work, you need to look more critically and
analytically at what you’ve written. In these circumstances, spontaneity is
less of a priority. Which, ironically, can sometimes lead to very spontaneous
creativity, so keep your notebook handy. As can going for a walk or doing the ironing. If you have any
experience at all as a writer, you will know that great ideas often ‘come to you’
while you are doing something completely different. It can sometimes be
very inconvenient, too. Have you ever stood up from the table in the middle of a
conversation, to surprised looks from everyone, and quickly scribbled down a
thought on the back of the first scrap of paper you could find?

Pull
Over, Will You?

What I’ve learned from reading about trying
not to try and the ironic process effect, is that there comes a point in every
writing session when I need to stop, even though I could carry on. Like when
you’ve been driving a long distance and you know you need to pull over and stop
to stretch your legs, even though the road ahead is straight and empty. I know
I can push on, and in the past I’ve done that too often. But I’m more aware now
that stopping at the right moment is paradoxically more productive than
continuing. At that moment I’ve done all the good writing I can do for a while—maybe
I just need a break, maybe that’s all there is for that particular day—and
stopping means I avoid regressing into a kind of self-recriminatory
slave-driver mode, which is antithetical to spontaneity and creativity.

This still leaves the issue of how and when
to make the effort to start writing in the first place. Isn’t that in itself
counterproductive? Well, no it isn’t. There are lots of different ways to start
a writing session. I don’t think it matters one bit how you do it, as long as
you start putting one word after another at some point. I sometimes like to
formulate a very specific task: Today I’m going to describe character A’s
emotional reaction to character B’s revelation in the sauna scene, or: This
morning I’m going to imagine five ways for character X to further endanger his
marriage. It doesn’t matter what it is, and nine times out of ten I’ll end up
writing something very different and completely unexpected anyway. As long as I
give myself something to start on, and as long as I’ve stopped my previous
writing session on time (see above), my brain will be eager to get stuck back
into the story.

As for deadlines, the main point is to achieve
productivity rather than to be busy all the time, and paradoxically, trying
hard to be productive often has the opposite effect.

Sunday, June 23, 2013

The belief that people
have fixed, inherent abilities rather than being capable of learning from experience,
is responsible for much misery among screenwriters. So it’s worth debunking.

We screenwriters face specific challenges at various stages
of our work, both in the creative and business realms. But often the biggest
challenge we face are our own debilitating assumptions about talent or
potential. I recently came across a book called Mindset by psychologist Dr. Carol S. Dweck which
threw some very welcome light on this problem.

Do I really have to?

In my own
case, for example, rewriting is a problem. I hate diving back into a feature screenplay once I’ve ‘finished’ it. I want to leave it the
way it is and move swiftly on to the next project. The result is a growing pile
of well-written but unmarketable first drafts.

Mindset has
helped me understand the reasons for my reluctance to embrace the rewriting
process, and the insights are shockingly simple. Dweck distinguishes what she
calls a fixed mindset,ie the
conviction that things like intelligence and artistic ability are fixed quotas
you get at birth, and a growth
mindset, which says you can
develop abilities by learning from experience. Her book covers many different
areas of activity, but I find it resonates powerfully with some significant and
limiting misconceptions I often wrestle with as a screenwriter. Here are five
of them:

Misconception
#1: Effort Equals Failure

The thing I hate
hearing most in interviews with successful screenwriters is that they wrote
their first draft in one marathon writing session. The thing just rolled out onto the
page in five days, seemingly effortlessly.The reason that's annoying is
because it reinforces the idea that speed and lack of exertion are evidence of
great ability. After all, if you’re really good at something you obviously
don’t need to make an effort to produce great work. Conversely, the blood,
sweat and tears (not to mention time) needed by mere mortals like me just to come
up with a good idea or two, is proof of our inferior abilities. But as author Malcolm Gladwell
has explained in his best-seller Outliers, successful people in all kinds of fields
invest huge amounts of time and energy in perfecting their skills.

Just press for finished screenplay.

I love the example
of Thomas Edison in this context. There’s a popular mythology surrounding the
inventor of the light bulb that he was a natural genius who suddenly came up
with this brilliant idea and it worked. But in reality his invention was anything but effortless. He worked tirelessly for years, employed a team of scientists to assist him, tried
and failed many times before finally hitting on the right technology. He worked
systematically and learned from his mistakes.

Misconception
#2: Talent. You Either Got It Or You Don’t

This is an insipid and
highly demotivating trope that you find in all areas of human endeavour, from the
creative professions to business and academic work, but also in sports and entertainment.
The plethora of talent shows on TV bears witness to this idea that talent is a
trait you either have or don’t. But the reality of so many great athletes, artists, musicians, business people, etc., is that they spent many long
years developing and honing their skills before they became successful, and
continued to do so afterwards too.

Look, I can even play the guitar.

There’s a famous
anecdote about legendary jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, who was once confronted by
someone who said something like: “Yes, but you’re black, it’s in your genes.”
To which Davis
replied that he had studied hard every day since he was a young boy, made a
superhuman effort to get into Julliard School of Music, and spent four years there
learning from the best possible teachers, while gigging in clubs at night. In
other words: He developed and nurtured his talent. It wasn’t a god-given,
pre-fabricated gift.

In fact, the
metaphor inherent in the use of the word ‘gifted’ in this context is telling:
Being gifted suggests you have been given something, an ability that has little
to do with you. It’s just something you have.

Misconception
#3: Failure Proves You’re Worthless

What is failure?
For example, a script you’ve written is rejected by agents and production
companies. Or: You get stuck on a script and abandon it. Or: Your screenplay doesn’t
place in a competition you’ve entered. Or perhaps your script is produced and
the resulting film is a flop and you’re blamed. Unfortunately, this kind of
failure is par for the screenwriting course. It’s unpleasant to experience
rejection, or be judged unfairly, but it only becomes a debilitating problem if
you believe rejection is evidence that you suck. A sure sign of this is when you
start apportioning blame and fantasizing about violent retribution (hey, write a story about it instead). Whereas, if
you believe that people can learn and improve from experience, then every
failure can be an important lesson too. It can point to specific aspects of
your writing or pitching skills that need improvement, enabling you to focus
your efforts more effectively next time.

You talkin' to me?

I have to admit
it’s quite unnerving to realize this about myself, because I like to think of
myself as a reasonable, fairly rational individual. Whereas this kind of
thinking is just so unhelpful, especially in a profession like screenwriting
where you are constantly confronted with rejection. It’s all very well learning
to “manage” rejection, but if deep-down you actually believe every rejection
proves your lack of ability, or conversely, that it demonstrates the subnormal
cognitive capacities of the rejecter, then you will never learn or improve.

Misconception
#4: You Consist Of A Fixed Set Of Traits

We’ve all heard
people say things like: Even as a toddler she was very musical. I’m just not a
maths person. He’s a born leader. I’m just not the creative type. And so on.
It’s a very common way of thinking about other people and about yourself, but in
reality people learn new skills, change jobs, emigrate, and learn from their
mistakes all the time. In her book, Dr. Dweck quotes numerous examples of
educational initiatives, projects with convicted criminals, different styles of
sports training, and much more, to demonstrate that often all it takes is a
shift in attitude away from this idea of fixed traits, to achieve significant
progress.

I sometimes wonder
if the phrase “I am a screenwriter” itself expresses this kind of belief. Most
people who are paid to write screenplays, do various other things too.
Especially considering that only a tiny minority of people who write
screenplays can live on doing only that. Most of us also have day jobs, earning
money with other forms writing such as copywriting, writing prose, playwriting,
journalism, and so on. I recently heard a published poet say she only considers
herself “a poet” while she’s writing a poem. I like that attitude.

Misconception
#5: Success Proves You’re Special

Even though it
feels a lot better than failure, success is just another great opportunity to
learn. Success can mean different things depending on where you are in your
screenwriting career (if there even is such a linear thing). It could be
something as simple as getting good feedback on a script, placing in a
screenwriting competition, or it might be landing a paid assignment, selling a
script, obtaining funding for your own production, etc. If you believe that
success is a sign of some special innate ability rather than of the effort you put into a
project, you make yourself vulnerable to inevitable subsequent
disappointments. Because the question then becomes: Where did my 'gift,' my ability go?

It’s like when a
child gets a good grade at school. The worst thing you can do as a parent is
suggest the success is evidence of some innate gift. You’re so clever. You’re
so musical. It’s much better to praise the kid for having worked hard. The same
goes for your own screenwriting success: Being aware of what you did to achieve
the success, helps you replicate it and improve on it in your next project.

All written with just my thumbs

For example, last
year my short script Happy New
Year was awarded production
funding by the Pears Foundation Short Film Fund and although I’ve written quite a
few short scripts, this one has received the best results so far. I’ve already
taken away plenty lessons from the experience, but one major one is: My writing
is at its best when I feel a strong emotional connection with the characters’
dilemmas, because that’s the fuel that helps me keep going back to script to
make it better and better. It moves my attention away from the idea that I have
to rewrite because my writing isn’t good, and channels it into the urge to
express what I set out to write as clearly as possible because it’s important to me.

I can’t possibly do
justice to Carol Dweck’s work here, so I would highly recommend reading
her book yourself. I’ve certainly learned a great deal from her, not just as a
screenwriter but also as a parent, a husband, a musician, and all the other
roles a person has.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Has the mythical Hero’s Journey story form run its
course, or is it perhaps truly a timeless expression of Human Nature?

So you want to write a screenplay?

Today I saw
that Christopher Vogler is coming to Paris with his three-day seminar on The
Writer’s Journey His method is based on Joseph Campbell’s seminal book on
comparative mythology, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, first published
in 1949, which in turn is heavily indebted to Jungian analytical psychology. The
announcement made me stop and think once again, seriously, about the value for screenwriters
of trawling the history of storytelling for recurring story forms, character
types, themes, etc.

Because It's Old Doesn't Mean It's True

Many great
movies follow the mythical structure, either deliberately or accidentally, but
I actually find it a bit worrying how this particular model is venerated, for
the following reason:

As an
abstract story form, the Hero’s Journey claims validity on the basis of a very
specific and flimsy assumption: Because this type of story has been told for
thousands of years, there must be some fundamental truth to it. However, I
think ideas about what it means to be human (and ultimately, this is what films
try to illuminate) are changing dramatically. The advent of neuroscience,
quantum physics and other “new” branches of science are radically challenging
many longstanding ideas about concepts such as free will, intuition,
decision-making, and so on.

The
Hero’s Journey celebrates and glorifies the past, rather than questioning the
underlying assumptions about human nature and how we give meaning to our lives.
It gives the filmmaker a false sense of comfort and reassurance, nurturing the
illusion that they are part of a long, noble tradition of truth-tellers, when
in fact what they are doing is uncritically confirming age-old biases.

It's All In The Willpower

Yes, but my willpower is huge.

Maybe
I’m wrong, but it seems to me that the Hero’s Journey is always ultimately an
argument for individual willpower as the final resort. The hero manages to
achieve the goal against all odds because of his or her willpower, or the hero
fails because of lack of willpower. But this is an outdated, romantic view of
human nature that bears little resemblance to the banality of real life.

Since Campbell did his initial studies,
a lot has changed. Scientific research has clearly shown that people’s actions
are largely determined by situational, genetic and neurological factors. Our decision-making
is mostly unconscious. Not in the literary, Freudian sense of an unconscious
full of mysteriously repressed forbidden desires, but unconscious in the sense
of not being accessible to conscious awareness. You don’t know why you chose
the Toyota for
the same reason you don’t know how you secrete hormones: It would be completely
impractical to be consciously aware of all these processes. The difference is that you think you do know why you chose the Toyota.

Plus, we
have far less agency as individual humans than we like to admit. Both in terms
of making choices and in terms of acting independently in general. We are much,
much less “in charge” of how we behave than we would like to believe. And yet the
Hero’s Journey is predicated on this notion that adversity can be overcome by asserting
your willpower.

Willpower,
if such a things exists, is a very minor factor in real life. Just think about
how hard it is to stick to a diet or go to the gym regularly. This is not
because of an archetype you are battling with, or because of unconscious
desires you’re suppressing. These are just metaphors that psychologists have used
in an attempt to describe the very real experience of not being consciously in
charge of one’s actions. Sticking to a diet is difficult because of the kind of
animal we are, living as we do in extremely new and unfamiliar circumstances on
an evolutionary time scale. You’re more likely to stick to a diet by using
cognitive tricks and social frameworks to keep you away from temptation, than
by telling yourself to man up.

The Screenwriter As Hero

I’m not
saying it’s wrong to make movies that reflect and revel in an ancient intuition
about individual willpower and agency, but I do think it’s problematic that
this model for telling romantic morality tales has become the litmus test for
“good screenwriting.”

Lucy, leaving her Ordinary World.

I hear you protesting: You have to know the rules to break them. Or:
There simply aren’t any new stories to be told. And so on. But that’s precisely
what a paradigm does. It engenders loyalty and the accompanying
rationalizations. Once you are committed to a paradigm, it’s almost impossible
to get your mind out of it. The problem is, essentially, that familiarity feels
like evidence of truth, but it isn’t necessarily.

It’s a
peculiar paradox, when you think about it: Designing your screenplay so that it
follows the familiar steps of the Hero’s Journey, might actually be a bit
cowardly. Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe there is such an unchanging thing as Human Nature, which was the same 3.2
million years ago for our ancestor Lucy as it will be for our
descendants in 3 million years from now. I’m sceptical, though.

On the
other hand, there are very practical reasons for using the Hero’s Journey,
like: It will make a screenplay easier to pitch, more accessible to a larger
audience, and so on. Which as far as I’m concerned are absolutely legitimate,
pragmatic, business reasons. But don’t get carried away and then claim that
it’s the only legitimate choice.

So,
Christopher Vogler in Paris…
I’m still undecided. Maybe I’ll see you there. If I do, I’ll be the one in the
cafeteria trying to muster the willpower to resist yet another croissant.

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Mistaking
a fantasy for a goal in life can lead to terrible choices. The same applies for
taking script notes literally.

I’ve recently been fortunate enough to have
short script of mine read and critiqued by a serious production company who is
interested in producing it. As is always the case, the notes I’ve received are
accompanied by some very creative suggestions for “fixing” aspects of the
script they think need improving. Here’s the thing: since having attended SimonPhillips session at the 2012 London Screenwriters Festival, I feel so much better
equipped to deal with these suggestions effectively. But first a digression
into fantasy land.

Fantasy As A Signpost

Man fantasizing about cross-dressing

When someone asks you what you would do if
you won the lottery, or what you would do differently if you could have the
last five years again, your fantasy automatically shifts into gear. You might
imagine the most outrageous alternative existence, or you might imagine something minuscule like having accepted rather than rejected that invitation from the guy
at work. But whatever the fantasy, the fantasy itself isn’t literally the thing
you want, it’s just a pointer in the direction of what you want.

The fantasy of a totally different
lifestyle might be an indication that you need to seriously deal with a professional
or relationship problem you’ve been avoiding. The fantasy about accepting the
invitation might be a prompt to take some steps to improve your social life. The
point is, the fantasy itself is not the goal. And often, if you chase a fantasy
as if it is literally what you want, you end up disappointed. Unfortunately,
this is why a lot of so-called self-help methods end up making you feel worse
about yourself.

Follow your dream!

Um… in a sense, perhaps. Taking fantasies
and daydreams seriously is a great way of distilling concrete, attainable
goals, or for simply articulating more clearly what you’re unsatisfied about
and want to change. But taking fantasies and daydreams literally, is a recipe
for disappointment or even disaster.

Simon Phillips

A one-hour session with a huge audience
during the London Screenwriters Festival can never do justice to the kind of profound
techniques Simon Phillips teaches. But as with all great insights, his approach
is based on some really very simple principles. They are simple to understand,
but take a lot or hard graft to genuinely internalize.

His point about notes, whether from producers,
directors or actors, is this: When they offer suggestions for improving the
script which seem absurd or inappropriate to you, you need to take the
suggestions seriously, but not necessarily literally. A suggested change to the
script is a manifestation of that person’s intuition that something isn’t
right, and it’s your job to find out what they’re intuiting. So Simon Phillips
has a method he calls Creative Reading, which helps you identify contradictory
or missing information in your script. Here’s what you do…

Creative Reading

Firstly, take a scene and read it as if it’s
a real-life event. Make a note of every concrete thing each character perceives
for the first time. This can include things a character sees, hears, smells,
and so on, things that happened before the scene started, things that are not
included in the scene description, things that are implied in the lay-out of
the location, etc. But only list specific, concrete perceptions, what Simon
Phillips calls “change points.” Not subsequent actions, dialogue, feelings, or
anything of that nature.

Secondly, still assuming this is a
real-life situation, make a note of each decision a character takes as a result
of the perceptions you’ve listed. Each time they perceive something they
decide to act or respond in a certain way. These are what Simon Phillips calls “phenomena”
and these are the specific actions a character takes, or the words they speak.

Just doing this is often more than enough
to expose things about the characters you may not have considered, or
inadvertently left unmentioned. Equally, it can show you where you’re giving
away too much information too soon, or repeating yourself, or leaving too much
information out, etc. It gives you conscious control over what information to
reveal or deliberately hide in a scene.

Script Notes As Fantasies

Does it have to be Nelson?

Armed with this kind of intimate knowledge
of your script, you can identify far more directly what the creative
suggestions you are receiving are indirectly flagging up. When the producer
wonders out loud whether the main character should be a young man instead of an
old lady, or whether the story might work better if set on a spaceship, these
are their fantasies. And like your own fantasies about starting a new life in Mozambique
or your fantasy about burying your spouse in your back yard, they are intuitive
pointers to a specific but as yet unarticulated problem.

It’s worth practising this technique on a
scene you have lying around. Identify all the “change points” and pretty
quickly you’ll see how you can make the scene more dramatic or suspenseful, or
what you can cut. I’ve actually been quite amazed by how effective and radical this
seemingly simple method can be.

If you don’t identify and remedy
confusing elements of the script, directors and actors will intuitively look for
ways to fill in the gaps themselves, which may not improve the resulting film. And
guess who will get the blame if the film isn’t well-received?

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Everyone
says it, and everyone knows it’s true: Screenwriting is rewriting. But why is
the rewrite such a pain?

A budding screenwriter on hearinghis first draft isn't Oscar material

I recently entered a new script of mine
into Phil Gladwin's Screenwriting Goldmine competition and it didn’t get anywhere. I knew this would
happen when I submitted it. Not because I have such a low opinion of my own
writing. Precisely the opposite, probably. Hubris. It was only a first draft, and I
knew as much. Not a totally incoherent vomit draft, but a first draft
as in: Meticulous outlining, reams of notes, a wall full of index cards, a
detailed treatment, a rough first draft, an edited first draft, an edited-again-after-getting-professional-feedback (from the likes of Danny Stack) first draft. In other words, a first draft as in: This is a good starting
point rather than a script that is as good as I can ever get it and ready to
show off to industry people.

It’s Not Ready. Get Over Yourself.

The thrill of typing Fade Out after all the
hard work that gets you there, can be blinding. I don’t know how it works in
terms of neuroscience, but I’m guessing it’s a bit like fashion. You see old
pictures of yourself and you wonder how you could ever have seriously liked
flared jeans, padded shoulders or spiky hair. I mean, come on, anyone can see
how ridiculous that looks… now. In terms of writing, it’s a similar process of
mental adjustment, but the process is faster. When you finish writing the
draft, everything in it seems cool and just right. Leave it alone for a while,
write something else, forget about it and then reread it and then it will hit you… wow, did I seriously
think that line was funny, or that scene was full of suspense? That’s a
critical moment, when you can go one of two ways: admit the script isn’t ready
and get over yourself, or go into denial and pretend/hope/pray no one will
notice. Guess which is more sensible.

Listen To The Voice You Most Want Ignore

If you’re seriously mentally ill, skip this
bit. If, like me, you’re only moderately insane, then you probably also have
this very, very quiet voice in your head that is always annoyingly correct in
retrospect. It whispers barely audible script notes which you really do not
want to hear (because they demand additional work) and which are remarkably
easy to pretend you didn’t hear. Or perhaps you find yourself imagining an
encounter with an imaginary movie executive in an imaginary world where you’re
invited in to discuss your imaginarily polished script which in reality is still
a first draft. And the imaginary executive has a shitload of really tough notes and questions about the script. News flash: The imaginary exec is the part of your mind that
knows what’s still wrong with the script. Don’t ignore it, because it has your
best interests at heart: Trying to market a half-baked script reflects badly on
you the writer. It closes rather than opens doors. Better to spend more time
fixing stuff first.

Dogs Don’t Fool Themselves, Humans Do

It’s not a pretty thing to own up to, but
if this experience has taught me one thing, it’s that I’m (still) really good
at fooling myself. If I were a dog (in the taxonomical sense), I would not try
to pretend, say, that I had sniffed a lamppost long enough if I still weren’t
genuinely 100% sure the neighbour’s bitch had been there five minutes ago. I
might feign hunger if I thought I’d get an extra bowlful of Bonzo, but I
wouldn’t try and convince myself I didn’t want to eat if my stomach told me
otherwise. I’m guessing a dog wouldn’t know how to do that even if it wanted to.
It’s a peculiarly human trait to be able to override one’s instinctive drives or
intuitive insights by envisaging the consequences of an action. In many situations
this is an excellent thing, and it keeps millions of people out of prison and
mental institutions every day. But sometimes an instinct or intuition can be a
life-saver too. However, you won’t know which it is if you don’t acknowledge it
in the first place.

If only I'd listened to my intuition...

In any case, from now on I’ll be paying
more attention to my intuition, listening out more often for that little voice
(but not in public places, I promise), and in general being less of a dog.

On a final note, my script involved a
wedding band, and I was considering registering for the upcoming London Screenwriting Festival's Comedy
ScriptLab with this script as a possible starting point for a TV comedy show. So
I thought I’d just do a bit of research and discovered to my horror (just in
time) that Turner TV is about to launch a new TV sitcom called, wait for it… The
Wedding Band, featuring some very similar characters to the ones in my script. Feeling
suitably pissed off that someone had stolen my premise (see, still fooling
myself), I thought for a while I’d just use the script for toilet paper. Then
the answer hit me: Drop the wedding band and rewrite the script from page one.
It will make the premise, the lead character and the entire story much leaner
and more like the father-and-son adventure I originally intended it to be. Now suddenly I feel all Zen about rewriting.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Whether
you’re writing a superhero blockbuster or a DIY lo-budget indie film, your
writing will be best when there’s something uniquely yours on the page. But
that’s terrifying.

What everyone in the film business is
looking for in a script, is an original voice. Something about the subject
matter and the writing style that sets it apart from the mass of generic,
derivative scripts trying to jump on the bandwagon of recent box office or cult
hits. For the screenwriter this is good and bad news. The good news is: There’s
only one of you, so your unique experiences and point of view are inherently
original. The bad news is: Writing from your own embarrassing, shameful or even
traumatic experience, exposes you to criticism that can be extremely painful
and inhibitive.

Embracing Rather Than Overcoming Your
Demons

Terrified screenwriter embracing his demon

In his wonderful book Writing From The Inside Out, screenwriter turned psychotherapist Dennis Palumbo talks
about how writers often become frustrated because they try to circumvent their embarrassing
hang-ups or painful memories rather than embracing them for what they are:
their own personal archive of raw material. Plus, what’s unique about a
writer’s experience, however disturbing, is part of being human and so
something to which other human beings will be able to relate. Which isn’t an
encouragement to refuse to write anything other than a verbatim transcription
of a highly emotional real life event (‘No, but it really happened that way!’),
because that’s always less interesting to others than to you. But it does mean
that your awful first kiss, your liberating divorce, your shameful experience as a son or a daughter or
as a father or mother—all these unprocessed experiences are chock full of authentic details, characters and emotions just begging to be mined rather
than avoided.

Exposing Yourself Emotionally Is Risky

Cut that scene, it turns my stomach.

The truth is, it is a terrifying prospect
to let strangers have a peek at your dark side, however authentic it may be.
They might laugh, be disgusted or simply disbelieving. Believe me, I’ve
received notes from readers disapproving of actions or traits of characters in
my writing which were direct representations of my own life. It doesn’t make
you feel good when a reader exclaims: “What kind of a shmuck would ever do that?!”
But what’s also true, as Dennis Palumbo writes, is that all screenwriting is
autobiographical. Not literally, but whatever you write is informed by and
infused with the way you experience the world, your past experiences and the
values you believe in. Even if you try and hide it (that’s part of you in
action, too…). So it hurts when someone dismisses or disapproves of your
material, because you’re so invested in it and it feels like they’re rejecting
you personally. But it’s par for the course and the risk is worth taking,
because at the very least you come out the other end wiser and better
equipped for your next writing challenge. And if you don’t stick your neck out, chances
are your writing will feel inhibited or generic, which will certainly and
justifiably lead to rejection anyway.

Why Authenticity Matters

I'm sorry, this suit just isn't me.

Lying, denying, avoiding, pretending, and
so on, are all very stressful occupations. And in terms of writing, they cause you to (unwittingly perhaps) try and spare your characters the confrontations
and conflicts you yourself are avoiding in real life. Whereas these are the
very conflicts that you know most intimately! Again, being authentic doesn't mean getting rid of these conflicts. On the contrary, it means acknowledging and embracing them as a real part of who you are. Tapping into them for their emotional power. But besides being essential for
being able to fully identify with and inhabit your characters, for being able to
write honestly and truthfully (and therefore more engagingly), being authentic
is basically just a lot better for you than being stuck in denial. Here’s an
article from Psychology Today which explains the benefits of authenticity nicely. So, basically: Lie, deny,
avoid, pretend and so on, but write truthfully about what that’s like…

Lastly, a huge thank you to the amazing
Corey Mandell, who recommended Dennis Palumbo’s book to me. But more
about Corey and his mind-boggling screenwriting insights in my next post.